“Getting a great idea…while falling to your doom.”
“Goodbye cruel world” is just one of the many emotions and phrases that takes on a whole new meaning in Eric Wu’s popular humor website, Eric Conveys an Emotion.
“People see the title and have this automatic image of desperation and sadness, but when you click on it, it’s not that at all,” said Wu. “It’s just a gigantic me floating in space kicking the Earth like a soccer ball. Probably for a goal.”
Wu, or Emotion Eric to fans, has become an Internet phenomenon in the last nine years, with more than 10 million visitors checking out his clever portrayals of more than 100 requested emotions and adventures.
In 2003, the site was nominated for a Webby Award in the humor category. Presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, the award honors excellence on the Internet.
Wu may seem like the typical Silicon Valley techie (he is a web developer at Yahoo! during the day), but his website is challenging the stereotype of the stoic, humorless Asian.
Andrew Y. Park, a friend of Wu’s, says the website has become so popular because Wu doesn’t go for easy comedy. “He takes an emotion request and figures out a witty way to answer it. I think that’s what makes people laugh,” Park said. “For example, when someone requests, ‘Eric as a chick magnet,’ you probably expect him to take a picture with him and a bunch of girls attracted to him. Instead, he turns the request literal, and has girls physically drawn to him by a magnetic force against their will. Anyone can sit there and make a funny face into the camera but only talented people can figure out a way to play against an audience’s expectations.”
Wu, 29, created the site out of boredom in the summer of 1998. He based it on a skit that comedian Andy Richter performed on his television show, where a word would appear on the bottom of the screen, and Richter would make a fun facial expression for it. Wu wanted it to be more interactive, where readers could request what they wanted to see.
He sent the link around to his friends to request emotions and pretty soon he was getting several hundred requests a day from people all over the country who heard about his site. He chooses the ones that provoke an immediate idea, or that he feels could be funny or visually interesting.
He attributes the site’s success to word of mouth.
“I didn’t know that he did the website, I found out about it from my friends,” said his mother Ursula. “When I first saw the website, I thought, that’s not my son. He’s rather quiet at home. Some of the pictures made me laugh out loud. Others I don’t get as much.”
“I don’t think Eric is wasting his time by doing this website. He’s making people laugh and when I’m lonesome for him, I check out his website,” she continued. “He’s a good and caring person, and he’s done so much good things with the website. He donated t-shirt sale profits to charity and local hospitals.”
As a child, Eric did not make many humorous faces, but he was always happy, according to Ursula.
“Personally I don’t think I’m that emotional in real life. For the website I’m more animated than usual; its more of a performance for other people to make them laugh,” admits Eric. “Most of my ideas come from just being a strange, juvenile person.”
“When I first took a look at his website I thought, ‘This is dumb.’ But as I went in and saw more and more of the emotions, it got funnier and funnier,” said Bruno Medeiros, a friend of Wu’s. “Eric’s website is a fun distraction from real life.”
“Eric has his own sense of humor,” said comedian Leah Eva. “He might be the equivalent to Tila Tequila. He figured out a way to create a website and get famous.”
Check him out at: www.emotioneric.com